Bullied Loner Attempts to Assassinate Trump

Is there a mass shooter personality type?

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The last time the United States went through a crisis period was at the end of its last secular cycle, which culminated in the Civil War. Political violence was practically nonexistent in 1820. By 1870 it had peaked, the per-capita fatality rate increasing more than a hundred-fold over that time period. A string of political assassinations peppered the next three decades, including two presidents and several other lesser officials. Many of those assassinations were motivated by competition for political office.

Now, for the second time in its history, the United States once again finds itself in the middle of a crisis period, with all the expected features: extreme political polarization and violence, intraelite fighting caused by overproduction of elites, and popular immiseration. And the former (and probable future) president just survived an attempted assassination.

So far details on the shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, are scarce. From the New York Post:

Crooks — who graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022 — was a loner who was “relentlessly” bullied, former classmate Jason Kohler told KDKA.

“If someone would say something to his face, he would just kind of stare at them,” Julianna Grooms, who graduated a year after the gunman, told the Journal. “People would say he was the student who would shoot up high school.”

And Time:

“He didn’t really fit in with everybody else,” classmate Sarah D’Angelo told the Wall Street Journal. “He was there but I can’t think of anyone who knew him well,” another classmate told BBC.

Another classmate also told the Post that the rifle team coach had concerns about Crooks based on “some crass jokes” Crooks made and how he interacted with others. “Our old coach was a stickler, he trained Navy marksmen, so he knew people. He knew when someone’s not the greatest person,” the classmate said.

Not much to go on, admittedly, but sometimes a little says a lot.

That said, not all his classmates had the same impression:

Mark Sigafoos, who graduated with Crooks, told CBS that he was “definitely nerdy for sure,” but “never gave off that he was creepy or like a school shooter.”

“He seemed like he wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Sigafoos said.

CBS’s Pittsburgh station, KDKA, interviewed Jameson Myers, a member of the school’s varsity rifle team, who said that Crooks had tried out for the team in his first year at the high school but did not qualify.

Myers said Crooks was a “nice kid who never talked poorly of anyone.”

“There was definitely chatter about him just looking a little different,” another classmate, who asked not to be named, told CNN. “Almost a retro nerd vibe.”

Summer Barkley, another classmate, told BBC that Crooks was “always getting good grades on tests” and was “very passionate about history.”

Zach Bradford, another classmate, described Crooks to the New York Times as “incredibly intelligent” and said his views in high school seemed “slightly right leaning.”

(Crooks reportedly had an associate degree in engineering science.)

Rather than repeat myself, let me just direct you to what I have written on the subject last year, and the year before that, with some excerpts. Here’s my first article on the subject from 2022:

Key quotes:

In the notes for Political Ponerology, in the section on “schizoid psychopathy,” I wrote: “Many school shooters have schizoid, schizotypal, and avoidant (or asthenic) traits” (p. 108).

As for the “profound estrangement,” marginalization and shunning, no, I don’t think bullying causes school shootings. Rather, it’s a similar dynamic to that of parents who adopt a violent parenting style in response to their child’s own aggression. Some people really do want friends, but their personalities repel normal people and inspire some to tease, bully, or harass them to the point of a breakdown, which seems to be the case with many school shooters.

Next was an article from March 2023:

Key quotes, from Lobaczewski’s section on schizoid personality disorder:

Sometimes they are eccentric and odd. Their poor sense of psychological situations and reality leads them to superimpose erroneous, pejorative interpretations upon other people’s intentions. They easily become involved in activities which are ostensibly moral, but which actually inflict damage upon themselves and others. (Political Ponerology, p. 106)

On a small social scale, such people … easily turn into tools of intrigue in the hands of clever and unscrupulous individuals … (pp. 107-108)

(I find that last statement very suggestive. Is there also a preferred patsy personality type?)

A few days later I posted this:

Key quote:

From information available, 21 shooters (43%) had received some form of mental health treatment prior to the shooting. … Also of note twelve (24%) of the individuals had prior interactions with law enforcement (e.g., arrests, received warnings). … Twenty-three individuals (47%) had been prescribed a psychotropic medication or were probably prescribed (e.g., reported psychiatric hospital admission even if specifics of treatment are unknown) a psychotropic medication at some point prior to the event (Table 3).

All that said, the FBI so far haven’t found any mental health issues:

In a call with reporters Sunday night, the FBI special agent in charge, Kevin Rojek, said there was “no indication of any mental health issues” regarding the shooter.

If anything more comes out relevant to the above, I’ll post about it. In the meantime, check out the articles above if you haven’t already.